


Belong

by xJane



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28127310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xJane/pseuds/xJane
Summary: David struggles to define belonging. But when he meets Matteo at the Christmas market, maybe that will change.
Relationships: Matteo Florenzi/David Schreibner
Comments: 12
Kudos: 50





	Belong

**Author's Note:**

> Some seasonal fluff for our boys.
> 
> <3

David is at his wit’s end. He has only one more week before his end-of-term assignment has to be handed in, and he still has no clue how to start.

They have to make a short film capturing the idea of belonging, and David hates it. He’s not even sure he could define belonging if his life depended on it. He’s never belonged anywhere his whole life.

He knows most of his classmates are working on a narrative video, but David has nothing meaningful to say on the matter. Now, with a week to go, he’s decided his only hope is to make a sort of montage capturing different images that could somehow be associated with belonging.

So far, he has some footage of a family eating pastries, powdered sugar on their noses, a toddler on the dad’s shoulders and another running around happily; a couple holding hands as they look at the giant Christmas tree in the park, the girl leaning backwards, the guy’s arm around her, his chin resting on her head; a group of teenagers wearing the same club shirt, teasing each other loudly.

It is all very trite, and David is pretty sure this is not going to get him a passing grade.

He is cold, and upset, and he wants to just throw his camera in the trash and quit school.

Much as he cannot seem to define belonging, let alone capture it, it looks like nobody else has that problem. The park is busy, and nobody else is here alone. It makes David nauseous, to see all these happy families and friends and couples and co-workers. He even sees a few kids from his class, hanging out by the mulled wine stall, laughing hysterically. They didn’t invite him along, and he sharply turns around. He doesn’t film them, even though they clearly belong where they are, together.

He walks by the river, away from the Christmas market, away from the sounds of laughter and joy and good cheer.

It looks like he will have to turn in his cliché footage and hope for the best.

As he turns a corner, he sees some playhouses for kids. Then, he blinks. Somebody is lying on the roof of one of them, spread out on their back, bundled up in a coat and a scarf and a beanie, yet their unprotected face is turned towards the sun, like a flower.

It is a beautiful, strange sight, and David starts filming it without realizing what he is doing. He slowly walks up closer, taking care not to disturb who is up there.

It is a boy, he determines as he approaches, with pale skin and pale lips, and rosy cheeks from the cold. Straw blonde hair peeks out from under the beanie.

David is close enough by now to be able to zoom in on that face.

The boy is alone, and he is stretched out on the roof of a playhouse that needs some new paint urgently, but he looks like he belongs here, David thinks.

Then, suddenly, the boy opens his eyes and looks straight into the lens, and David is looking straight at the image, and –

Blue. Vivid, deep, crystal clear like a well. And beyond that – splintered glass. A mirror showing David himself.

It is surprising, and even slightly scary.

David needs a few long moments, and a fortifying breath, to be able to muster the strength to lower the camera and stare into those blue eyes without a barrier.

“Are you filming me?”

David feels caught. He supposes he is. Captivated, too, but that is another matter entirely.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry. I can delete it, if you want.”

As soon as he said the words, he hopes the boy won’t ask him to. He’d like to look at it again, later, in the silence of his room.

The boy with the blue eyes shrugs. David puts his camera away, and suddenly this whole thing is awkward.

“Why?”, the boy asks after a few beats, and for a second, David has no idea what he is talking about.

“Huh? Oh! Oh, uh,”, he stutters and mumbles, and a blush creeps up on his cheeks, “I, uh, I have to do a project. For college. About belonging.”

Shit. Why did he add that? The boy lifts a careful eyebrow.

“About belonging?”

David nods.

“And you were filming me? I don’t belong anywhere.”

A mirror. Fractured pieces of glass showing David himself.

“You looked… peaceful. Like you belong here.”

The boy looks at David for a long beat, his blue eyes unwavering.

“Do you wanna come up? Maybe you belong here too.”

David isn’t sure he does, but he wishes he might. So after a few moments of hesitation, he nods, and the boy moves to the side, and David climbs up. They lie, for a while, not talking, but there is not a lot of space, and their hands brush occasionally. It sends shivers through David’s body, and he hopes the other boy doesn’t notice, or if he does, that he just accounts it to the cold.

“I’m Matteo,” the boy offers after a silence that stretched for minutes, but was never oppressive.

“David.”

They grow silent again, and David closes his eyes. After a while, he hears shuffling to his left, and when he looks, Matteo is sitting up, his hand behind him on the playhouse roof. He is looking at David, and David feels the pull of the blue again.

“So,” Matteo says. “Belonging.”

David sits up too. He pulls his knees towards him, feet flat on the slanted roof.

“Yeah. I have nothing to say about that.”

Matteo snorts.

“Me neither. I don’t belong anywhere. Except on this roof, then, according to you.”

David blushes. It was a stupid thing to say. Matteo notices.

“Hey, it’s okay. Don’t worry, I’m not upset.”

“I don’t belong anywhere either,” David offers up nevertheless, as an olive branch.

Sharp blue eyes. Fragments of a soul. A mirror, showing David all his secret dreams and wishes.

And maybe Matteo recognizes something in David too, because they talk. About not belonging, and wanting to, and yet hiding so much of themselves that they cannot.

And then about other things, music and movies and food, and when they are positively freezing, they clumsily climb down, and wander back to where the other people are enjoying themselves, and they buy each other waffles and hot chocolate, and they laugh about silly things, and maybe, maybe, if somebody else were to watch them, they’d look like they belonged.

David knows, somewhere, in the back of his mind, that he has an assignment to complete in less than a week, but he has no time. He is busy watching the footage of Matteo soaking up the feeble sunrays on the roof of an old playhouse, of Matteo blinking open his blue eyes and staring right at David. And when he is not doing that, over and over again, he is texting Matteo, making plans for later. And when he gets back home from spending time with Matteo – riding the Ferris wheel, watching the lighting of the Christmas tree, attempting to ice skate, making fun of the people wearing silly Santa hats, drinking more hot chocolate than should be humanly possible – he lies on his back in his bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about doing it all over again.

Then, Matteo brings it up.

“Did you finish your assignment yet?”

He doesn’t need to specify. David, who was giggling at the antics of some ducks, sobers up immediately.

“Don’t remind me of it. The deadline is tomorrow, after class, and I still have no inspiration whatsoever. I’m just handing in the stuff I filmed that day when we met, fuck it.”

Matteo nods.

“Including me?”

David thinks about it.

“Would you be okay with that?”

He wonders if he should admit to Matteo that he’s watched it a million times, the forty-odd seconds of Matteo lying there, the few precious seconds of Matteo’s blue eyes.

Matteo shrugs. David already knows that Matteo doesn’t speak a lot, thinks about his words carefully. But he also knows how to decipher a myriad of Matteo’s non-verbal clues, too. It makes him feel like he and Matteo speak the same language somehow. This is not a shrug of indifference, it is saying, almost as clearly as if Matteo did voice it, _I have no clue how I could be helpful, but I’d agree to anything if it would mean something to you_. It makes David feel warm and welcome.

It’s really not his fault that he wants to stay here, in this bubble with Matteo, instead of going home and pretending to work on the stupid thing. At home, he will be lost in the image of Matteo’s eyes. It’s better out here, where he loses himself in the real deal.

They are wandering around the Christmas market again, not talking a lot, content to be just together. They’ve done most of the activities by now, tried the different foods, checked out the crafts and art stalls. David has bought a present for Laura, Matteo for his mom.

They end up at the hot chocolate stall again, hassling each other over who gets to pay, making fun of the other’s preferred way of mixing it up – Matteo adds loads of whipped cream, while David goes for a shot of peppermint – when the old lady manning the stand suddenly pipes up.

“Stop your quibbling, boys, this one’s on the house!”

They both turn around, amazed.

“Uh, thank you,” David finally manages.

The lady smiles beatifically.

“It warms an old woman’s heart to see two young boys like yourselves so in love. It’s clear you belong together.”

And with those words, she’s already moving on to the next customers, leaving David speechless. Matteo doesn’t look like he’s doing a lot better, a haze in his eyes.

“What did she say?”, Matteo finally stammers, when they have walked for a few minutes, sipping their free drinks.

“That we are in love?”, David repeats, lowly.

As he says it, he realizes he should have understood a whole lot sooner. He’s spent every moment not in class or not sleeping with Matteo the last week, and well, if he’s honest, most of the moments he spent asleep too.

He is indeed in love with Matteo. It’s not a frightening feeling, instead, it feels light and bright. Like a star started shining inside him. It makes sense, he thinks, seeing the Christmas lights reflected in Matteo’s eyes.

But Matteo shakes his head frantically.

“No,” he urges, “no, not that. The other thing.”

For a split second, David feels hurt that Matteo dismisses the “in love” part so hurriedly, but then he thinks back on the woman’s words, and he gasps.

“That we belong together.”

“Yeah,” Matteo says, smiling widely, his eyes clear as a summer sky, as the Mediterranean on a sunny day. “ _Belong_ , David.”

David feels his own grin grow wide, and without thinking, he grabs Matteo’s hand.

“Belong,” he repeats.

And then they start laughing, and they probably scare some innocent passers-by, but they don’t care.

And then David carefully puts his half-empty mug on a bench nearby, and does the same with Matteo’s, and slowly places his gloved hand on Matteo’s cheek. Even through the fabric, he can feel Matteo’s warmth, and he basks in it.

Matteo’s eyes widen impossibly, and the blue is intoxicating. And then Matteo grins.

“But you are right. She did also say we are in love,” Matteo chuckles, as he leans into David’s hand.

“And are we?”

David thinks he knows the answer. He is not nervous, and he is not afraid. Matteo’s eyes ground him, calm him, steady him. David still sees himself mirrored deep inside them, but maybe, maybe the pieces of the mirror have been glued together over the past week.

Matteo nods. It is a tiny motion of his head, and if David wasn’t so focused on him, he might have missed it completely.

But it is enough.

With a sigh, David closes the distance between them.

Matteo’s lips are cold, but softer than David imagined in all those moments looking at them on the small screen of his camera. The kiss starts gentle, but when Matteo licks hesitantly over David’s mouth, David immediately lets him in, and they explore each other leisurely, secure in the knowledge this is but the first kiss of many.

Waking up next to Matteo feels more like home than anything else ever has.

David quietly gets out from under the blankets, out from the delicious warmth emanating from Matteo’s body curled up against him. It is not easy to let go of the blissful feeling.

But he has an assignment to complete.

Belonging.

The word suddenly means something, something wonderful and magical.

It will be a very short film, David thinks, but watching Matteo through the camera, sleep-warm wrinkled skin pale against the creased pillow, hair messy, lips curved in a half-smile, one hand next to his face, open and vulnerable, he knows he has found where he belongs. And when Matteo starts to wake up, blinking once, twice, before fixing those blue eyes on David and smiling, David feels the knowledge surging through his veins, and he is smart enough to drop the camera, and kiss Matteo until they’re both certain they’ll never not belong again.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a comment, if you like! 
> 
> <3


End file.
